


The Explanation

by JessaLRynn



Series: Recipes for Disaster [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Humor, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Ruining Your Tropes, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 12:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13951866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: Another classic: Mix one loud-and-slapping-mum-in-a-track-suit, one pink-and-yellow human companion to the Last of the Time Lords, and one Estate full of unhelpful advice. Add a dash of Time-Lord-in-leather. Shake well. Duck and cover.





	The Explanation

Just ten seconds, she'd told her mum and he had managed that, managed it well, in fact. One day and ten seconds was a vast improvement over twelve hours and twelve months, wasn't it? It had been weeks or maybe a couple of months for them, but what amount of time, if any, counted when you lived in a time traveling alien space ship?  
  
Rose had let him off of the whole domestic day thing, didn't even want to try to drag him into it, after their last three adventures had been so hard for him. Last one, they'd ended up locked up by a bunch of aliens who wanted to see his reproductive practices. They'd put on a rather boring show - he'd touched her face, she'd had a nap - and then ended up having to blow up the aliens' lab anyway. No idea why, he never did tell her that.  
  
Instead, she sat alone with her mum, having tea and listening to Powell Estate gossip, and generally deflecting the conversation any and every time it wandered back to her purported sex life. Mums weren't supposed to be curious about their kids' sex lives, at least not sane, normal mums. She was sure about that. She was also absolutely certain she wasn't concerned about her mum's sex life and, in fact, would pay good money, if she had any, not to hear about it, ever.  
  
Basically, the fourth time her mum suggested that the Doctor was an alien pervert who kept her naked and enslaved on his ship to slake his inhuman lust on her fair, mortal flesh, Rose decided two things. First, she'd love to try to talk him into that. Mind, she'd probably have to get herself naked and enslaved, probably on several occasions, before he caught on. Second, she really wished she'd told her mum she would come home before she was forty instead of in ten seconds.  
  
She deflected it gently by asking how Harriet was getting on. She found out, and it would probably please the Doctor to hear it, that the woman was an overnight success in politics, which meant the time line was on a nice, even keel.  
  
Then, Jackie talked about how neither Rose nor Mickey nor even the Doctor were being given anything like credit for saving the world from Downing Street two days ago.  
  
"Mind, we're also not getting any of the blame," Rose pointed out. "And I dunno about you, but I can't afford Downing Street. 'Magine it cost a mint."  
  
Jackie humphed. "I'm just saying. Compensation, Rose. You need to think about that, 'cuz when he gets a new sex toy, you're gonna need something."  
  
"I am NOT a sex toy!" Rose snapped.  
  
"I know you're not, Rose, but I'm bettin' himself don't. He's a man. You show 'im a pair o' knickers he's never seen before and his brains short out. But once he gets 'em off a few times, he's bored and goes looking."  
  
"I'm not shagging the Doctor," Rose said firmly.  
  
"Yeah, you just keep tellin' me that, and I s'pose you think I'll believe you some day."  
  
Then there was the phone call from Mickey. He'd apparently been down to the TARDIS and received his daily helping of abuse from the Doctor. Now he was alternating between asking her to come over and asking her what it was like to sleep with an alien.  
  
Rose got terribly frustrated with him and told him to go shag Tricia Delaney, who he'd hated since grade school. "And I am not shagging the Doctor," she added, and slammed the phone into the cradle.  
  
It rang again immediately, and Rose hoped it was the Doctor, calling to say the world would end if they didn't leave the planet in the next thirty seconds. It wasn't, it was Shireen, and she was absolutely ecstatic when she heard Rose pick up.  
  
"Heard you got a new man!" she exclaimed. "Jackie says he's a real piece of work, and Mickey said he's old enough to be your dad."  
  
 _Old enough to be my ancestor_ , Rose thought, not that she cared. "He ain't my new man, he's the Doctor, we're just mates. We travel together is all."  
  
"Bet you can't wait to change that."  
  
Rose giggled guiltily. "Yeah, maybe."  
  
"Hah," exclaimed Shireen, "so you ARE sleeping with 'im! How is he?"  
  
Rose sighed.  
  
After she managed to get rid of Shireen by giving her the number of her super phone and telling the girl she'd call her later, her mum called Mo and invited her over. And of course Jackie and Mo had a long, loud conversation about how sleeping with your boss never worked out.  
  
"You'd both know!" she shrieked, and slammed the door of her room, and dug out some more of her clothes to take with her. Maybe she wouldn't come home for another couple years.  
  
As Mo was leaving, Bev arrived, and she didn't let the closed door stop her from lecturing Rose at length about shagging older men and how she needed to at least make sure he bought her lots of gifts so she'd have stuff to pawn when she found out about his wife and six kids. That bit was exceptionally painful, because the Doctor probably had once had at least a wife, and probably a whole passel of kids, and they were all dead in a War that still gave him nightmares. Which meant that she could never, ever ask.  
  
Once Bev was gone, her mum informed her that she'd invited her grandmother to tea. Rose seriously considered trying to take over the world herself so that the Doctor would have to stop her. She'd be easy to stop; all he'd have to do was get her out of here and promise not to bring her back no matter how she begged in fits of homesickness.  
  
She helped straighten up the flat and prepared herself to endure the slightly senile accusations from her grandmother Prentice. Funny thing was, her grandmother was more likely to believe Rose was shagging an alien from outer space than that she wasn't shagging an older man.  
  
She did indeed endure senile ramblings, but the accusations that she was a slut were mercifully punctuated by accusations that Jackie was also a slut. And Bev was a slut, and Mo, and Shireen, and Mickey, and anyone else who she could find a photo of in the flat, actually, because Gran prided herself on being able to tell a slut by looks alone.  
  
By the end, rather than getting frustrated, Jackie and Rose were quietly teasing the woman, though she wouldn't know, tossing out various features of people they knew and knew of, just to see. So far, Harriet was also a slut, but the late PM was not, and also several famous people - though not Brittney Spears, surprisingly enough. "What about big ears?" Jackie asked, while Rose hid a laugh behind her hands.  
  
"Nah, they're not sluts. That's the kind you really gotta watch out for. They wanna get married and have babies."  
  
It stopped being funny right then, especially as Jackie looked horrified. Rose tried to hide under the table without looking like she was hiding, and went so far as to offer to clean up while Jackie walked Gran down to catch her bus.  
  


*?*

  
  
The flat was tidy, Rose's bag was packed and next to the door, Shireen's new mobile number was in her back pocket, and Rose and Jackie were saying their goodbyes. The front door was open behind them, as Rose was hoping to make it quick.  
  
"You be careful, Rose," Jackie cautioned.  
  
"I will, Mum," she promised. "The Doctor takes good care of me."  
  
"That's what I'm talking about, Rose. You make sure you use protection with that one. God knows how his babies would come out. I know you might be having a good time, but you'll regret it if you end pregnant with alien sprogs."  
  
"I'm not shagging the Doctor," Rose said, one last time, and she really, really, really couldn't take it any more.  
  
"Right," said Jackie, and rolled her eyes. "And why would I believe that?"  
  
Something snapped. "You're right," Rose said. "Why would you believe it? Ok, Mum, I'll just tell ya. Yes, I'm shagging the Doctor. And he's an alien. I have sex, with an alien, any time I want, and I really, REALLY like it." She shivered involuntarily as her imagination supplied a couple of ideas to go with her tirade. "It's good. It's really good, Mum, best sex you can possibly imagine, and then some, and I get it any time I want, any where I want, and any way I want, and it's fantastic! We do run around the ship naked sometimes, can't help it, and did you know the ears are a sign of virility where he comes from? I can't imagine what I was thinking all day, tellin' you about the places we been and the worlds we saved and all the good we done, when all you really wanted to hear about was your daughter shagging a nine hundred year old alien. Oh, an' he ain't all that different, either, just so you know. Any other questions you don't really want to know the answers to?"  
  
There was a noise from behind her and Rose felt her heart stop. Slowly, desperately hoping she was wrong, she turned her head.  
  
"Ya done?" asked the Doctor.  
  
"Yeah," she said, softly, and couldn't look up to meet his blue eyes if her life depended on it. "Think so."  
  
"Good," he said. "Came ta tell ya we needed to go because something alien's come up on the TARDIS sensors, but given that speech o' yours, I think I might better rephrase that. This yours?"  
  
"Yeah," said Rose as he picked up her bags and loped out the door. Rose chewed her lip and turned back to make sure Jackie Tyler's silence didn't indicate anything sinister. Her mum had apparently been replaced by a marble statue of her mum, because she wasn't moving or even blinking. Possibly, she had even forgotten to breathe. Rose waved a hand in front of Jackie's face and her mum shook herself.  
  
"Right," she said. "I love you. You have a good time, stay safe, and call me more often. And tell himself to come to tea next time." And then she walked back into the living room and turned on the telly. The entire tirade had apparently been edited out of her memory.  
  
Rose just wished she could edit it out of her own. "Bye, Mum. Love you."  
  
She left the flat, walked dazedly down the stairs and got to the end of the walkway when she found the Doctor stopped, leaning heavily against the building and breathing hard. "Um..." she said cautiously. "You all right?"  
  
"Don't do something like that again," he ordered.  
  
"Sorry," she apologized, utterly chastened. Mind, she didn't know what he had to complain about, but then he was very much into his dignity. She risked a small peek at him, her cheeks still smoldering.  
  
"Don't have ta apologize," he said, kindly, and pushed a lock of her hair back behind her ear. "I just almost broke a rib trying not ta laugh."  
  
"Oh," she said, and that actually made her blush brighter.  
  
"Just one thing," he added, hoisting her bags again.  
  
"Yeah, what is it?"  
  
"Who the hell told you the thing about the ears?" He shot her that broad, brilliant, daft grin she loved so much, and then turned and headed off for the TARDIS, whistling.  
  
Took her a second to place the song. When she realized it was My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, she decided no one would convict her if she murdered him.


End file.
